#12: From Constrained to Open Knowledge and Expression

My students are a part of the "App Generation," defined by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis as "young people growing up...[being] immersed in apps," which either enable meaning making or create dependency on the app's operation (2013, p. 7). In the concluding chapter of App Generation, Gardner and Davis report that "the majority...of education apps encourage pursuit of the goals and means of traditional education by digital means" (p. 179). These types of apps enable enhancement of traditional educational tasks via technology--see the SAMR model. There are also apps that enable or transform: they give "the chance to initiate and fashion one's own products...[and] the capacity to make use of diverse forms of understanding, knowing, expressing, and critiquing" (p. 180-181). Some differences in the two types of apps and associated education

• App-enabling: constructivism, subjective, existing and new (created) knowledge, open forms of expression
• App-dependent: behaviorism, objective, existing knowledge, constrained or instructed expression

So how do we put all the pieces together to help students be good users of information, have net smarts, and be app-enabled? Students who are good users of information have tools to evaluate resources (Halo Effect) and know how to search and sort. Teachers provide opportunities for these students to engage in the information-using process (SSCCS) to construct meaningful outcomes from their newly acquired knowledge to represent understanding (Students as Designers, C of ABCs). Students learn to be net smart via information-using and meaning-making processes; they learn crap detection via web resource evaluation and participatory and collaborative behaviors via social learning (Vygotsky). Students who are app enabled learn via activities that are student-centered and use applications to access and express knowledge--tasks which would not be conceivable otherwise.